[[Mohan K.V 2017-01-09, 09:58:22 Source]]
सदास्वादः
92
राह पकड़ तू एक चला चल, पा जाएगा मधुशाला
(rāh pakad tū ek calā cal, pā jāegā madhuśālā)
“Pick a path and get going, you’ll find the tavern”
To catch the rhythm, we can ignore the Hindi pronunciation for a moment, and assume that all consonants are full (i.e. ignore ‘schwa syncope’). A clear 8-8-8-6 mātra pattern emerges:
राह पकड़ तू / एक चला चल, / पा जाएगा / मधुशाला
Context
This phrase is from the poem Madhuśālā by Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Written in 1935 when Bachchan was just in his late 20s, the poem became an instant sensation and continues to be greatly admired today. There’s a wonderful rendition by Manna Dey, with a cameo by Bachchan himself in the first verse. We’re grateful to our readers Piyush Srivastava and Arvind Iyer for introducing us to this treasure.
The heart of the poem’s mystique is a single metaphor invoked in each of its 135 verses, that of a “house of wine”, a tavern. The tavern, its wine, its servers and even its goblets serve as deep metaphors, and the poet’s genius is in keeping them fresh and unexpected in every verse.
Consider one in the spirit of, ‘ekaṃ sat viprā bahudhā vadanti’ –
मदिरालय जाने को घर से, चलता है पीने वाला,
किस पथ से जाऊं, असमंजस में है वह भोला भाला ।
अलग अलग पथ बतलाते सब, पर में यह बतलाता हूँ,
राह पकड़ तू एक चला चल, पा जाएगा मधुशाला ॥ 6
madirālay jāne ko ghar se, caltā hai pīne vālā,
kis path se jāūn, asamanjas me hai vah bholā bhālā |
alag alag path batlāte sab, par me yah batlātā hū,
rāh pakaḍ tū ek calā cal, pā jāegā madhuśālā ||
“The drinker sets out from home for the tavern.
‘Which path should I take?’ – the poor fellow seems confused.
People suggest different paths, but I simply say,
Pick a path and get going, you’ll find the tavern.”
Something tells us the poet would have loved that old Russian proverb, “The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully”!
More deeply, one could read the Vedantic meaning of multiple paths to the same truth, or the traveler’s creed, “we travel not to move around, but to be moved” – the metaphor gently flexes to accommodate all readings.
The flexibility extends to an even bigger scale: in each verse, the tavern represents something different. From representing an overarching goal in life in the verse above, it serves as an exponent of the carpe diem mindset, faintly reminiscent of the Cārvākas:
यम आयेगा साकी बनकर साथ लिए काली हाला
पी न होश में फ़िर आएगा सुरा- विसुध यह मतवाला
यह अंतिम बेहोशी, अंतिम साकी, अंतिम प्याला है
पथिक, प्यार से पीना इसको फ़िर न मिलेगी मधुशाला ।। 80
yam āyegā sākī bankar sāth lie kālī hālā
pī na hoś me phir āegā surā-visudh yah matvālā
yah antim behośī, antim sākī, antim pyālā hai
pathik, pyār se pīnā isko phir na milegī madhuśālā ||
“Death will come, the serving-girl with dark wine.
Our drunkard won’t recover from that drink.
This is the last high, the last serving-girl, the last cup,
Drink deep, traveler, you won’t find the tavern again.”
Later, it turns into something more worldly, where the happiness of pursuit trumps any end goal:
उस प्याले से प्यार मुझे जो दूर हथेली से प्याला,
उस हाला से चाव मुझे जो दूर अधर से है हाला ।
प्यार नहीं पा जाने में है, पाने के अरमानों में!
पा जाता तब, हाय, न इतनी प्यारी लगती मधुशाला ॥ 99
us pyāle se pyār mujhe jo dūr hathelī se pyālā,
us hālā se cāv mujhe jo dūr adhar se hai hālā |
pyār nahī pā jāne me hai, pāne ke armāno me!
pā jātā tab, hāy, na itnī pyārī lagtī madhuśālā ||
“I love that glass the most, which is far from my reach.
I love that wine the most, which tempts my lips from afar.
There is little joy in coming to own – it’s all in the dreams of acquiring!
When I finally reach it, alas, the tavern isn’t so great.”
In some other verses, the tavern serves to carry a social message:
कभी न सुन पड़ता, “इसने, हा, छू दी मेरी हाला”,
कभी न कोई कहता, “उसने जूठा कर डाला प्याला” ।
सभी जाति के लोग यहाँ पर साथ बैठकर पीते हैं,
सौ सुधारकों का करती है काम अकेले मधुशाला ॥ 57
kabhī na sun paḍtā, “isne, hā, chū dī merī hālā”,
kabhī na koī kahtā, “usne jūṭhā kar ḍālā pyālā” |
sabhī jāti ke log yahā par sāth baiṭhkar pīte hai,
sau sudhārko kā kartī hai kām akele madhuśālā ||
“Never once is it heard, “No! He touched my wine!”
Never does anyone say, “He has ruined my cup!”
From every caste, people here sit together and drink;
The work of a hundred reformers, my tavern accomplishes alone!”
This verse is an excellent example of how deep the metaphors in Madhuśālā are. On the surface reading, the verse talks of a literal tavern and its patrons having a good time. A rebellious teenager who’s just tasted his first sip of alcohol might find it empowering.
But a little deeper in, the tavern here could stand for cooperation and trade, and the innately egalitarian philosophy that accompanies it. Writing nearly a hundred years ago in his masterful Reconstructing India, Sir M. Visvesvaraya observes,
As a matter of fact, in some respects the caste regulations are already being disregarded. Medicine, ice and aerated waters, bread and biscuits, are used without question by high-caste people who nevertheless consider that water, if touched by a low-caste person, conveys pollution. If Indians were consistent, they would consider that clean water and clean food may be accepted from any clean person’s hand. If this were done, a saner social system would be built up and the business of the country would be improved.
Andy Warhol, writing about Coke and extending to the de-facto ‘caste’ of our times, wealth:
What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
At the deepest level, the tavern could be an instinct that seeks to unite – one that makes sacrifices, forgives slights, and accepts.
Elsewhere, the tavern appears to represent life itself:
जितनी दिल की गहराई हो उतना गहरा है प्याला,
जितनी मन की मादकता हो उतनी मादक है हाला,
जितनी उर की भावुकता हो उतना सुन्दर साकी है,
जितना हो जो रसिक, उसे है उतनी रसमय मधुशाला।। 128
jitnī dil kī gahrāī ho utnā gahrā hai pyālā,
jitnī man kī mādaktā ho utnī mādak hai hālā,
jitnī ur kī bhāvuktā ho utnā sundar sākī hai,
jitnā ho jo rasik, use hai utnī rasmay madhuśālā||
“Only as deep as the heart, is the cup.
Only as euphoric as the mind can get, is the wine’s high.
Only as much passion as the bosom can bear, does the serving-girl’s beauty excite.
As tasteful one is, only so is the tavern.”
“Remember: despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you, as deeply as they’ve met themselves.” –Matt Kahn
“The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.” –Robert Pirsig
लाल सुरा की धार लपट सी कह न इसे देना ज्वाला,
फेनिल मदिरा है, मत इसको कह देना उर का छाला,
दर्द नशा है इस मदिरा का विगत स्मृतियाँ साकी हैं,
पीड़ा में आनंद जिसे हो, आए मेरी मधुशाला।। 14
lāl surā kī dhār lapaṭ sī kah na ise denā jvālā,
phenil madirā hai, mat isko kah denā ur kā chālā,
dard naśā hai is madirā kā vigat smṛtiyā sākī hai,
pīḍā me ānand jise ho, āe merī madhuśālā||
“Don’t call it lava, though it flows red like a tongue of flame.
Don’t call it the blistered heart, it is only foaming wine.
Lost memories are the serving-girls, and pain is its high.
Those who can find happiness in their suffering, come to my tavern.”
Matches so beautifully with the Buddhist saying, “Life is joyful participation in a world of sorrows.”
There’s a curious feature of Sanskrit poetry called ‘kavi-samaya’, or ‘conventional poetic belief’. Take the phrase ‘crocodile tears’, commonly understood to mean fake sorrow. This was made famous by Shakespeare, based on some pseudo-scientific beliefs of his time. We know now that crocodiles don’t cry out of sorrow nor fake compassion for their victims, but the phrase and its connotation have stuck on.
Sanskrit, like with most things it deals with, cranks it up to eleven. There are dozens of such false beliefs that are nevertheless accepted as true. Lotuses are supposed to bloom at sunrise and close at sunset, water-lilies do the same at moonrise/moonset, snakes coil around sandalwood trees and live on air, elephants have pearls in their forehead, peacocks subsist on raindrops, and many more.
In many instances, there’s a juicy poetic notion in the idea: for example, snakes around sandalwood trees gives the impression that something attractive always has danger nearby. They may also serve as shortcuts and as signals in other media like painting and drama: showing a lotus close and a lily open signifies that night has fallen, even on a brightly lit stage, just as a drumbeat signals the arrival of the police in Indian movies (and consequently, permission for the audience to take smoke breaks, change diapers and catch up on gossip, because the plot has concluded).
The setting of the Madhuśālā appears to be a kind of ‘higher-order’ kavi-samaya. The tavern seems like a kind of grand union set of all possible human experience, unconstrained by religious/social/other artificial constraints. The wine stands for a number of joys, and there is a sense of naturality, simplicity, spontaneity, sincerity and innocence associated with it.
Now all this is great, but anyone who’s had a few beers at the local pub can attest that alcohol and actual brick-and-mortar madhuśālās aren’t that magical! Indeed, Bachchan himself was a teetotaller, and had no direct experience of the hālā he so admires! Nevertheless, his stylized description is all the better for it, and frees him from the straitjacket of ethanol’s pharmacodynamics.
One wonders if there are any quirks of the social milieu of India in the 1930’s that stimulated and caused such motifs to be widely enjoyed. There is a strikingly similar work in Kannada by Prof. G. P. Rajaratnam (another teetotaller), called Ratnana Padagalu, published just a couple years before Madhuśālā. Like the latter, Ratnana Padagalu is immensely popular even today, and attributes the same powers of Bachchan’s hālā to Ratna’s uḷi eṇḍa (sour arrack). The subtext is similar to the Madhuśālā, but there it is acted out instead of explicitly spoken of, “shown, not told”.
Another highly admired trait of popular poems of the time appears to have been a capacity to comment on a wide variety of experiences and life insights in a simple framework. DVG’s treasure Manku-timmana-kagga, a veritable Meru of this trait that poems like Madhuśālā look up to, is framed as the self-reflection of a simpleton. Poems, or even prose works, of this variety don’t appear to be popular in English. One has to settle for short essays or convocation speeches (or even comics or lists of aphorisms), overtly religious/political frameworks, or fiction works that add enough layers to hide any trace of generality. Alternatively, one has to seek to mine them from strictly topical writings, like a tycoon’s annual letter to shareholders, a doctor’s passing comment in a medical paper, or a programming guru’s reflections. There appears to be a kind of resistance in the modern mind to any kind of general life insight, often unfairly (and unprofitably) clubbing it with moralizing or parochial thinking. All the better for us – we’ll explore more Indian treasures in this genre in future chapters.
Parting Thought
One of the striking features of daughter languages of Sanskrit is that the similarities go far beyond the linguistics, and deep into the shared mindspace. Here is a Madhuśālā verse that almost seems like a hat-tip to Bhartṛhari’s famous verse, ‘sā ramyā nagarī…’
बड़े बड़े परिवार मिटें यों, एक न हो रोनेवाला,
हो जाएँ सुनसान महल वे, जहाँ थिरकतीं सुरबाला,
राज्य उलट जाएँ, भूपों की भाग्य सुलक्ष्मी सो जाए,
जमे रहेंगे पीनेवाले, जगा करेगी मधुशाला।। 21
baḍe baḍe parivār miṭe yo, ek na ho ronevālā,
ho jāe sunsān mahal ve, jahā thirakatī surbālā,
rājy ulaṭ jāe, bhūpo kī bhāgy sulakṣmī so jāe,
jame rahenge pīnevāle, jagā karegī madhuśālā||
“Mighty clans may be wiped out, with no one to weep for them.
Grand palaces, where heavenly nymphs once pranced, may lay deserted.
Empires may capsize and royal fortunes drift away to sleep.
And yet, the drunkards will still flock; the tavern will stay awake!”
Please join the Google Group to subscribe to these (~ biweekly) postings:
<https://groups.google.com/group/sadaswada/subscribe?hl=en